You emphasize several things that help a book, or hurt it. Among these things were blurbs from known authors, reviews, etc. What would be helpful to some of us would be somewhat of a breakdown of what sort of impact these things have, and a ranking of importance?
For instance, your Crichton is an Idiot author had one pity blurb, and their one good review was in RT (which I know you pretty much only get if you have a paid ad). The other review, in Booklist, was awful.
In your figuring of the P&L how much weight do blurbs carry? Unfortunately, until you've already been granted money to print the galleys, you won't get the reviews, but once you HAVE the good reviews, on an average, how much do they change the outcome?
I ask this as an author with solis A+ reviews from Publisher's Weekly, but on HC books out from smaller publishers. Blurbs good in both cases (and more available from best-selling authors) but there has been no interest thus far from larger publishers for either taking these books to mass market, or in subsequent books (also with the same good blurbs).
That leads to another question. Being with the smaller / medium level publisher, who does very very low print runs, does the fact that the print run is very low, and sells through count for anything, or is it only taken into account that a low number were sold?
I'm looking for a formula, I guess, to assign importance to different factors, as opposed to other factors, with an eye toward plugging all of the useful information you provided into a workable "plan".
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Something that would be helpful
Date: 2006-04-22 02:23 pm (UTC)For instance, your Crichton is an Idiot author had one pity blurb, and their one good review was in RT (which I know you pretty much only get if you have a paid ad). The other review, in Booklist, was awful.
In your figuring of the P&L how much weight do blurbs carry? Unfortunately, until you've already been granted money to print the galleys, you won't get the reviews, but once you HAVE the good reviews, on an average, how much do they change the outcome?
I ask this as an author with solis A+ reviews from Publisher's Weekly, but on HC books out from smaller publishers. Blurbs good in both cases (and more available from best-selling authors) but there has been no interest thus far from larger publishers for either taking these books to mass market, or in subsequent books (also with the same good blurbs).
That leads to another question. Being with the smaller / medium level publisher, who does very very low print runs, does the fact that the print run is very low, and sells through count for anything, or is it only taken into account that a low number were sold?
I'm looking for a formula, I guess, to assign importance to different factors, as opposed to other factors, with an eye toward plugging all of the useful information you provided into a workable "plan".
DNW